Like fresh beef, milk of cows or goats was never used by natives, neither were eggs eaten by Bonny men or any of the neighbouring coast tribes.
Native houses in Bonny are very little different to the general run of native houses along this coast, as far as the external appearance goes; but inside they are perfect Hampton Court mazes to the uninitiated. A noticeable peculiarity is that the entrance door and all the other doorways in a native house have a fixed barrier about eighteen inches high between each room from whence start the doorways proper. This forms a very favourite seat of the master of the house or his wife, but one must never step over them while any one is sitting on them; a man stepping over one while a man is sitting there means “poison for eye,” as the natives express it, which means to say your action will cause them sickness. A man doing the same when a female is sitting in this position has a much more significant meaning, and for a slave would entail a good flogging.
No community of natives demonstrates the peculiar workings of domestic slavery so well as these people, for in no other place on the coast can any one find so many instances of the rapid rise of a bought slave from the lowest rung of the slave ladder to the topmost.
The bought slave was quite a different class to the son of a slave born in Bonny of slave parents; for outside the direct descendants of the Pepple family, the freemen of Bonny could be counted on one hand; therefore, a slave born in Bonny was looked upon as being almost equal with a freeman. These were called Bonny free; and the Bonny free, though they boast of their birth, can’t boast of the most brains, for the most intelligent men of these people—especially during the last fifty years—have been bought slaves, with few exceptions.
In 1837, the then reigning King Pepple had to get Captain Craigie of H.M. Navy to assist him in asserting his rights, a slave of his having usurped his place. A few years after, in 1854, this same King Pepple was deposed by his chiefs for making continuous war on New Calabar, and thus draining the wealth of the country, as well as for his cruelties to his own people; they, at the same time, found out another charge against him that he was an usurper, as there was a young man named Dapho Pepple, a son of his elder brother, who was entitled to the throne, and, with the assistance of the late Consul Beecroft, the change was made and the fighting King Pepple was taken away to Fernando Po, and eventually found his way to England in 1857; there he resided four years, was carefully looked after by the temperance party, and eventually became a convert to Christianity. Several sets of verses were strung together for and about him by the goody goody papers of the time. He made strong appeals to the British public for £20,000 to establish a mission in his country; but in this matter I am afraid he was not successful, as the mission was never started by him, and on his arrival home in Bonny River, in August, 1861, there was a dearth of current coin in the royal pockets.
The following is King Pepple’s address in verse, which, he asserted, he spoke when seeking funds to establish a mission in his country. He only asked for a modest £20,000. I never heard what he got, but one thing I do know, whatever he did get, he never expended a shilling of it for the purpose it was given him:—
Beloved bretheren,
Young and old,
I come to day to ask for gold
To help the missionary Coons
Who brave Bonny’s hot simoons.
Tooralooral! Rich and poor,
A pewter plate is at the door!
Now why must each of you decide
Your heart and purse to open wide?
It is because the imbued sin
That e’en now lurks each heart within
Tooralooral! with all its might
Is prompting you to close them tight.
And then it must not be forgot
That Hell is wide and awful hot,
And gibbering fiends around us grin
With joy to see us tumble in.
Tooralooral! don’t forget
The Devil he may have you yet.
But would you from destruction turn,
Nor ’mid sulphurous vapours burn,
But each become a blessed spirit,
And kingdom come with joy inherit.
Tooralooral! tip us a bob,
To help us on our holy job.